Hipstamatic's Oggl is one of the best options on the App Store if you're looking for a great app to help you take amazing photos and explore those of other photographers. Recently though, Oggl got a huge update that brings more features to this fantastic photo discovery app; making it even better with the inclusion of iPad compatibility, the new "SurfMode," and other great additions.

If you're a fan of Oggl but would prefer to use it on an iPad, this update should be pretty exciting for you; the app is now universal and "runs beautifully on iPad" according to the update notes. Secondly, the update adds a feature called "SurfMode," which allows you to view any feed within Oggl as a slideshow--just turn your device sideways. "SurfMode" works over AirPlay too, allowing you to "present any feed on Oggl to your Apple TV and have a live photo feed for any event or occasion."

The update packs many more features, and if you're interested in reading about them head over to the app's iTunes page. You can grab Oggl on the App Store for free.

Oggl has been updated with a brand-new home screen that features a grid of all the content users follow. It also adds the ability to create photo collections for grouping images, discovering new photos and collections, and share photos and profiles through email or social media. The update even improved on the profiles with expanded bios and links to the web.

What do the following iOS apps and games have in common? Well, they all surprised the heck out of us when they were released. That's saying something, considering we're all jaded journalists and such.

Apps that come along and knock our socks off are rare, so we've put together a list of ten of the most surprising apps from the last five years of the App Store to commemorate that fact, and to maybe show you some cool stuff you might have missed.

Surprising Apps

These are the apps that came out of left field, making innovative use of iOS hardware and software to bring us a truly unexpected experience.

Hipstamatic - The grandaddy of hipster photo apps, Hipstamatic created the crop and filter genre, with switchable virtual lenses and film types to apply to your ironic images.
Word Lens - Aim your iPhone camera at a sign in another language and see it magically transformed right on your device. If this isn't transformative tech, I don't know what is.
Cycloramic - This one lets you set your iPhone down on a hard surface, then uses the built-in vibration feature to spin around in a circle, taking a 360-degree video of the entire process. Wow!
Dark Sky - This innovative weather app does one thing really well: warn you when it's going to rain. You can even get a 5 minute warning, which is enough to get your umbrella out and stay dry!
Star Walk - Astronomy apps have been all the rage, especially since the iPad came out. But this one lets you hold your iOS device up to the sky, and it will show you what stars and other heavenly objects are up there, in real time. Heck, you can even track Santa with it during the holidays.

Surprising Games

These games either came out of nowhere and burned themselves into the collective unconscious, or were so bizarrely fun and successful that they had to be mentioned here.

Game Dev Story - We've spent entire days in thrall to this cleverly addictive saga of video game development, putting our retro-styled pixel people through their paces to push out the next great hit.
Candy Crush Saga - What's so surprising about a match-three game becoming the top-grossing app in just a few weeks? Well, it's a match-three game.
Tiny Wings - One indie dev, Andreas Illiger, sat down and created this brilliant piece of game design, popularizing the one-touch game genre and garnering a ton of copycat and clone apps in the bargain. Plus, he made a lot of money, which we like to talk about, too.
Angry Birds - Did you ever think that flinging birds in a slingshot at pigs in bizarre structures would turn into a global hit, spawning way too many tie-in items, like fishing lures? Us, neither.
10000000 - Small, brutally difficult indie game that became a smash hit overnight. That's pretty surprising, right?

We Are Your App Review Source

Need to know the latest and greatest apps each and every week? Look no further than 148Apps. Our reviewers comb through the vast numbers of new apps out there, find the good ones, and write about them in depth. The ones we love become Editor’s Choice, standing out above the many good apps and games with something just a little bit more to offer. Want to see what we've been up to this week? Take a look below for a sampling of our latest reviews. And if you want more, be sure to hit our Reviews Archive.

Poker Night 2 brings together Brock Samson from Venture Bros. (which has a season premiere very soon!), Claptrap from Borderlands, Ash Williams from the Evil Dead series (not voiced by Bruce Campbell, unfortunately), and Sam from Telltale’s own Sam and Max to play some high-stakes poker. Oh, and GLaDOS from Portal is the dealer. Moxxxi from Borderlands makes a silent cameo as the bartender. It’s a basic game of poker, with both Texas hold ‘em and Omaha hold ‘em (like Texas hold ‘em but with four dealt cards, two of which can be played with the community cards). However, the fun comes as much from getting to experience the witty banter from these cross-media characters meeting up. Each character has their own playing style and personality that must be considered when playing against them. Ash is rather cocky and willing to bluff a lot. Claptrap really seems to only like to play when he has good hands, being extremely conservative. Brock will go hard when he has a good hand, but will bluff occasionally. Sam…I can’t quite figure him out but he does seem to be a bluffer. Ash scares me the most because he matches my own play style. --Carter Dotson

Long ago, as iOS reckons time, before the 1 billion dollar acquisition of Instagram by Facebook, and before photo filters were ubiquitous, there was Hipstamatic, a digital recreation of an analog camera, complete with changeable lenses and film types. But alas, time passed by and Hipstamatic, while still useful and engaging, lost mindshare to Instagram and the onslaught of photo processing apps. Many fondly remembered it, but used it less and less. Hipstamatic’s developer hopes to change this with the introduction of Oggl, their new social network/camera app hybrid that attempts to link the Hipstamatic name and legacy to a powerful but easy to use photo hub. --Chris Kirby

I have no idea how to pronounce Manuganu, nor do I know what it means. It just looks llike a string of random letters to me. It’s supposed to be the main character’s name, but we all know names usually mean something. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say it must amount something like “gorgeous and fantastic endless runner.” Just a guess. Manuganu is a kid with problems. Specifically he can’t seem to go anywhere without having to leap over chasms, dodge swinging boulders, or avoid all sorts of sharp-toothed nasties. Every single stage is full of them, as well as a number of tokens to collect, and players will have to make good use of the intuitive controls to dodge and collect everything. There are only two buttons (jump/double-jump and halting), and a single gesture (swipe down to slide) to worry about. Halting makes for an interesting addition as there are times when players won’t simply be able to run past something. Instead they’ll have to stop running, wait for an opening, then make like a tree. --Rob Rich

Other 148Apps Network Sites

If you are looking for the best reviews of kids' apps and/or Android apps, just head right over to GiggleApps and AndroidRundown. Here are just some of the reviews these sites served up this week:

GiggleApps

I have some interesting news that I would like to share with readers. Toca Boca has recently acquired zinc Roe’s series of Tickle Tap apps. As readers may know, Toca Boca is a favorite developer of mine, as are the Tickle Tap apps that were developed by zinc Roe a few years back. These Tickle Tap apps were some of the first apps I shared with my son, and they still are perennial favorites that have kept my son’s attention for all this time. The joining of Toca Boca and the creative minds behind these Tickle Tap Apps has created a true dream team of app developers with the common bonds of highly stylized illustrations, bright and bold colors and whimsical details that produce very high expectations of what is to come from this new developer, Sago Sago. --Amy Solomon

The Trip Little Critter Reading Adventure is a fun, interactive storybook app based on Mercer Mayer’s Little Critter’s The Trip, with versions for both iPad as well as iPhone available through iTunes. This new application, developed by Silver Dolphin, differs greatly from – and should not be confused with – the straightforward adaptation of Little Critter stories developed by another company. It is worth explaining to readers that the original Mercer Mayer title focuses on a car trip to a camp site as told in pictures. Yet the text, although also telling the tale of this long family outing, included a heavy use of alphabet letters, from A to Z, such as B for Bags and C for Car, as well as words adults can relate to, possibly even more than their children can, such as E for the car’s engine overheating, letter M for the mess the Critter kids made in the back of the car, or T for the flat tire they get along the way, creating a witty alphabet book enjoyable for all – children and parents alike. --Amy Solomon

On Beyond Bugs: All About Insects is a thoughtful adaptation of the book of the same name, part of The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library developed by Oceanhouse Media. Here, children will learn about many bug-related topics as they enjoy the Seuss-like illustrations and rhyming text to which this book is fashioned as The Cat in the Hat, along with Thing One and Thing Two, introducing readers to many fun bug facts such as basic anatomy, natural defenses or the strength of insects such as ants. --Amy Solomon

AndroidRundown

Pinball is an interesting state of flux: the genre as a physical form is not in great shape, but it is doing fantastic in virtual form. Fans of the silver ball have series like Pinball Arcade and Zen Pinball which both provide regular amounts of new tables to freshen up the experience regularly. Star Wars Pinball, a standalone release of the Zen Pinball table based off of Empire Strikes Back, is a great way to check in to this series. While the game includes in-app purchases for two other Star Wars tables, the base purchase includes just the one table. That’s hardly a bad thing – there’s a lot going on here. There’s multiple missions to complete by hitting various triggers, lots of targets to go for, and plenty of flashing lights and loud noises. The fanservice is strong with this one – there’s all kinds of art and sounds from the movie. This isn’t a cheap cash-in, a lot of love was put in to this game. --Carter Dotson

Mini Golf Matchup is a pleasant putt putt sim that puts a major emphasis on social interaction. The multiplayer format really encourages playing with friends. I can play with people in my email contacts, or random strangers. Upon finding an opponent, it comes down to turn-by-turn play on the same course. I love the fact that I could have games going against numerous people simultaneously, and at my own pace. For the random games, I simply waited for the game to do the matching, and waited for my turn. The courses had different looks, different levels of difficulty/hazards and different scenery. To get the ball into okay, I simply long-pressed and pulled… sort of like creating the virtual motion that mimics how a pinball machine game is started. In true real-life fashion, the shortest distance between tee and chip was rarely a straight line; thus, using the boundaries as bumpers was almost a needed skill. --Tre Lawrence

Boardtastic Skateboarding 2 from Perblue is a cool game that invokes the Tony Hawk in everybody. As a reboot of Perblue’s original skateboarding game, it has some big shoes to fill. It was a graphical feast, with fine looking 3D graphics. The developer did a good job with shadows and imagery, with realistic animations that mimicked real life skateboarding movements quite well. The skate environments all have realistically gritty feels to them, and frankly, I found it easy to enjoy how the game looked. There are several game modes to enjoy: By myself, I could do Ladder, for personal advancement, or stuff like Freestyle, Survival, Circuit or I could get into a Tournament. There was a multiplayer section as well. --Tre Lawrence

Hipstamatic has been a bit of an odd duck on the App Store. While it was one of the first photo apps to gain a strong following, it has already been used to take over two billion photos. But, it has been somewhat forgotten now that social sharing has taken center stage. Don't get me wrong, it still has a large and very vocal following, and also a very creatively talented following, but it doesn't have the mindshare of an app like Instagram. Somewhat forgotten even though it's still going strong with over four million monthly users. The reason for it losing mindshare could be that Hipstamatic lacks an integrated social stream like Instagram and others. Well, that is until oggl is released later this week.

Instagram was a great idea, and a very wonderful creative stream of photos, for a short while anyway. But now it's filled with duck faces, selflies, and bad pictures of food. While oggl is open to anyone, it is expected that it will maintain a much higher quality clientele than what is currently seen in Instagram. While Instagram is mean to share, oggl is mean to inspire. Some of the artists on there already are truly astonishing.

Expected to be on the App Store on Thursday, oggl takes the high quality filter system that Hipstamatic pioneered and adds a sharing community on top of it. They do this for free, ad-free, and the artists retain full rights to their photos. How can they do this? Add-ons of course. The Hipstamatic community is pretty crazy for new lenses and films, the add-ons that add new effects to photos in Hipstamatic. So you can buy them in Hipstamatic and access them in oggl, or you can subscribe to oggl for $0.99/month or $9.99/year and get access to all of the lenses and films ever made.

Now the bad news, oggl will be granting access slowly, over time to those that request it at http://oggl.com/. The slowed down access is to ensure that the service quality isn't degraded as it ramps up. So, head over there now and request access.

This is an interesting move, if not completely unexpected one for Hipstamatic. It should be a great community for photographers and creative types. That is if they can keep the duck faces to a minimum.

Hipstamatic is about to storm on to Instagram's social network in a new update that lets users share their photos to Instagram directly from Hipstamatic. Part of the reason why Instagram is so popular, boasting over 15 million users, is not just because it's been on the pulse of the filtered photograph trend, but because of its social features. Not only is it easy for users to share photos to their friends on their existing networks, but its own Instagram network has become big in its own right, serving 10 million daily page views of the Instagram website and its photos.

Hipstamatic was about a year ahead of Instagram, and is popular in its own right, with its developers claiming that over 50 million photos are taken from the app on a monthly basis. Now, the app can share photos directly to an Instagram account as well as Twitter, Facebook (with the ability to tag friends directly in Hipstamatic), Tumblr, and even Flickr. As well, photos seen in Instagram with the #Hipstamatic tag can now be viewed directly in Hipstamatic. The new "tag equipment" option will also let users share the information about the photo's equipment and filters along with the photo itself. The free update is available now.

This week at 148Apps.com we delved into the latest from the developers of Hipstamatic, the "disposable" Hipstamatic D-Series app. 148Apps founder Jeff Scott says, "I got a chance to try out the new app and can report that Hipstamatic D-Series does indeed bring back the nostalgic memories of sharing a disposable camera and swapping double prints into the digital age. It’s a great idea and well executed. There’s even the anxious need to burn the last shot by taking a picture of your foot, just to get the roll developed quicker. It’s indeed very fun.

At GiggleApps.com, reviewer Amy Solomon took a close look at the first interactive book from The Cat in the Hat's Learning Library, There's No Place Like Space. Solomon says, "There’s No Place Like Space, although a creative, fun and educational book, is not written by Seuss himself, although it is written in a Seuss-like style. I enjoy this book, as does my son, but my husband and I did comment to ourselves that the text is not as well-written as the classic books by Seuss."

Finally, 148Apps.biz site editor Rob LeFebvre reported on a new report from mobile analytics company Flurry. LeFebvre writes, "Flurry shows the fact that developers are making more money on iOS than on Android, even as the numbers of Android OS enabled smartphones continues to increase, commanding as much as 53% of the market, according to an NPD Group study released yesterday as well."

Love it or hate it, the iPhone is a big player when it comes to on the go photography. Many people no longer buy point and shoot cameras as they already have their iPhone with them everywhere they go. Apple has dedicated a section of the App Store to Camera and Photography apps. There are even photographers who have dedicated columns to “iPhoneography.” If you happen to fit into the group of users that loves taking photos with your iPhone, but want something to help make those photos more unique, we have four apps perfect for taking your photos further.

Hipstamatic:
Hipstamatic was one of the first apps to take the iPhone camera and give it a retro feel. Now this app has become a must own for many people. Hipstamatic gives you plenty of options when it comes to combining various lenses with film types. The abundance of combinations is staggering, while the end results are fun and enjoyable to those that dig the retro feel. If you love old school photos, this is a must own app.

TiltShift Generator – Fake Miniature:
If you have ever seen a photo in which the real-life subject looked like miniaturized model in a fake world, this is most likely due to the use of a TiltShift lens. While the actual lenses to produce this effect cost thousands of dollars, you can mimic the effect right off your iPhone. By adjusting various parameters, you can take an ordinary iPhone photo and turn it into a miniaturized photo, without all the expensive camera gear. If you just want a simple way of adding a bit of lens blur to a photo, this will handle that as well. This is a powerful, yet easy to understand app for any iPhoneographer.

Pro HDR:
HDR, or high dynamic range, is becoming all the rage these days. HDR photos are actually a combination of two or more photos taken at various exposures. These exposures are then combined in software to reduce over exposed areas, while brightening under exposed areas. Pro HDR makes this complicated process fast and easy. You even have control over the final image before it is saved. This app takes normal iPhone HDR to a new and even better level!

360 Panorama:
Panoramic photos are another style of photograph that often requires complicated software to stitch two or more photos together. 360 Panorama gives you this power right on your iPhone. Just fire up the app and follow the onscreen instructions while you take some photos. The app will seamlessly combine the snapshots into one beautiful panoramic photo. You can even create 360degree photos, thus giving you more power over your creativity.

My wife and I decided to eschew family Christmas traditions and make our own this year by visiting Disney's Magic Kingdom in Orlando. The experience itself was wonderful, in spite of surprisingly large crowds when we visited on Christmas Eve (no fault to Disney there, but even THEY seemed overwhelmed by the numbers that visited the park). But what amazed me the most about our trip is how essential our iPhones have become to every aspect of our travel. From navigation to photography to even Disney park preparation, our iPhone 4(s) had us covered every step of the way.

Our single-purpose GPS is way out of date (I'm the cheapskate and can just never bring myself to pay for map upgrades) so we decided to try out MotionX GPS Drive on this trip and the results could not have been better. MotionX GPS Drive has recently received a much-requested upgrade adding full-voice support for street names, so this new feature was added just in time for our trip. Mind you, neither the app nor the full-voice is perfect. "Exit 83-A" was commonly referred to as "Exit 83uh" and other street names were mangled from time to time, but as a whole the new voice functions worked well. And then there was the time when we needed to travel to the Animal Kingdom Lodge for dinner at African restaurant Boma. When I selected "Boma's at Animal Kingdom Lodge" from the app, it began navigating us, but our destination ended up at the main gate of some Orlando resident's palatial estate. A little fine-tuning was needed, but the app finally got us where we needed to go. MotionX GPS Drive is also a steal from a financial perspective - $0.99 for the app with guided navigation for $2.99 for 30 days. MotionX wisely does not auto-renew, so you only need to pay the navigation fee when you really need it, which is a very nice touch.

Once in the park, we had two go-to apps - Undercover Tourist and Hipstamatic. If you're unfamiliar with Undercover Tourist, it's an app designed to give you information about anticipated crowds at the various Disney parks and queue wait times at rides within the parks. Unfortunately, Undercover Tourist pushed an update right before our trip and it broke the app on my iPhone 4. I was hopeful when I saw a new update released, but mine still crashes. My wife, ever reluctant to update apps, still had an older version on her phone, so we were able to use it. The crowd forecast for December 24th (color coded: red for heavy, yellow for moderate and green for light) showed green so we thought we had it made. Like I said earlier, the crowds seemed to surprise even Disney, so I can't really blame Undercover Tourist for a mistake in its data. The good news is that the queue estimates were generally accurate and helped us, particularly early on, decide where to go and what to do. And since the app is free (there is a paid ad-free version) there isn't much I can complain about.

Finally, what would a trip to the Magic Kingdom be without lots and lots of pictures? Sure, the iPhone 4 has a much-improved camera, but I'm a sucker for the retro surprises generated by Apple's iPhone App of the Year Hipstamatic. I suppose it's because my first trip to the Magic Kingdom happened only a year or so after the park opened, but I love the washed-out, 1970s style prints that Hipstamatic generates on the fly. Changing virtual lenses and films was a great way to while away the time spent in long, long lines (the Haunted Mansion line was longer than I have ever experienced), and the photos the app took are some of my favorites from this trip. There's a reason Apple selected Hipstamatic, and it's primarily because of its easy of use, versatility and overall fun-factor.

So, we're back home now, but there's no mistaking that the iPhone 4 changed our Disney experience for the better. For one thing, it was the first time we didn't have to lug around a heavy, cumbersome camera throughout the park; but beyond that, it made the day more pleasant, more organized and a lot more fun to remember.

iOS has brought users a great all-in-one stop shop for taking photos, manipulating them, posting them online, and composing a whole blog post over that spectacular shot. In fact, because the iPad and iPhone have such great apps, there are some pros that don’t even carry a laptop with them onto photo shoots. Everything they need for quickly getting photos to the world can easily be handled right on these magical devices. Let’s look at just a few tools that make this possible.

Shooting The PhotoThe first major change is just how the iPhone takes photos. Long gone are boring, under/over exposed, bland photos. Now we have HDR embedded right in the included camera app. If this is not powerful enough for you, apps like TrueHDR and Pro HDR can take your HDR photos to higher levels than what is already available.

Maybe you like adding a bit of flair to your photos -- this is where wonderful apps like Hipstamatic come into play. I use this app all the time when I am shooting fun setups with all my Lego People. The various lenses and films all add up for some fun, and unique shots that I have thought of recreating with my DSLR and Photoshop.

Processing Without PhotoshopThe next part of any good shot is the post-processing step, and yes, just about any photo worth its weight in metallic paper is photoshopped in some form or another. This may be as simple as removing dust particles or increasing saturation levels, to full-blown photo manipulations in layers that a slice of Tiramisu would be jealous of.

Apps like Filterstorm, or Photoshop Express, allow for some basic photo-editing while away from your computer. Filterstorm even allows you to make adjustments in that all too familiar layer workflow so many of us are comfortable with. Are these apps going to allow you to completely avoid using Photoshop on a laptop? Of course not. However, what you do have is the ability to post process while sipping on a beer at the local pup without all the worry of dropping a pint on your precious laptop.

Uploading Those ShotsUploading photos does have a few gotchas, as there is not one single great app to handle the huge number of uploading services. There are apps to handle some of the most popular sharing services like Facebook, Smugmug, Flickr, Twitter, and Picasa, however. Worst-case scenario is you have to email your photo to a client or a photo sharing service. This is undoubtedly one of the bigger downfalls of doing photography with the iOS devices, rather than a laptop.

Composing A Photo Blog PostOnce your photo is captured, processed, and uploaded, you just might want to quickly write up a small blog post about the photo. There are apps to allow you to do just that as well, but again, this will be limited to your choice of blog host. Some services may even support one iOS device over another device, as is the case with SquareSpace only supporting the iPhone at this time. There are applications like BlogPress and WordPress that can be used to update blogs, too. A tip here: if you can’t post from an app, type it up, email it to someone you trust, and have them add the blog posting. We all know that content is the key to keeping your viewers coming back.

iOS is not perfect, but it is getting better with every release. More companies are releasing apps that easily allow photo manipulation, sharing, and blogging for those who are constantly on the go. How has your iDevice changed your workflows while travelling? Are you one of those few who now leave your laptop at home in exchange for the lighter iOS devices?